Well, this sounds interesting to me. I don't have the money to sink into paper Magic. Or at least, it's not worth it since I'll almost never get to play, but this F2P model could really work. Depends on if you can be relatively competitive without paying too much out.

Should hopefully be out in about a month if it's like all the old DOTP games, being released about a week before the related core set got released as a teaser, they make take a bit longer on this one though, either way I'm keen to have a way to play with my friends who don't like spending money on physical cards.

I'm legit stoked about this. I love Hearthstone's free to play model but it's no Magic. I have had to stop playing paper Magic like many others because of it's cost. Being a grownup makes it harder to justify spending that much when more pertinent things demand our income. But I don't mind grinding for awesome digital cards with some occasional investing in the game. Let's see if this Duels will be wait I've waited for.Also, being digital means I will always find someone to play with. Not always the case with paper Magic.

Im curious about this. As a person who mainly plays Hearthstone and their only other card game experience being Yugioh back around the time of synchro summons started (card games on motorcycles!), how accessible is MtG?

The barrier to entry for the card game was always too severe (so expensive) to get into the paper game, but an online game would definitely be easier to hop into. However I've looked at some of those cards and the text is kind of baffling and excessively long?

Is it just a matter of needing to know a few key things and being able to learn while doing or would I need to actually sit down and read a bunch to learn how to play?

shintakie10:Im curious about this. As a person who mainly plays Hearthstone and their only other card game experience being Yugioh back around the time of synchro summons started (card games on motorcycles!), how accessible is MtG?

The barrier to entry for the card game was always too severe (so expensive) to get into the paper game, but an online game would definitely be easier to hop into. However I've looked at some of those cards and the text is kind of baffling and excessively long?

Is it just a matter of needing to know a few key things and being able to learn while doing or would I need to actually sit down and read a bunch to learn how to play?

The biggest wall for me was the cost.I find one of those easy to learn hard to master sort of games. There is a lot of reading but the basic rules are fairly straightforward.

shintakie10:Im curious about this. As a person who mainly plays Hearthstone and their only other card game experience being Yugioh back around the time of synchro summons started (card games on motorcycles!), how accessible is MtG?

It depends exactly what you mean by "accessible". In terms of learning the rules and basic gameplay, it's really not complicated at all. But the trouble is that it was designed to be played by real people face to face, not as a computer game, and it doesn't translate at all well between the two mediums. Some of the things people complain about Hearthstone missing aren't there for exactly that reason. For example, in Magic, you can play some cards during your opponents turn. In the tabletop game, that's great because your opponent doesn't know about it in advance and you can just jump in at any time and do it. On a computer, it means every single action by either player is followed by a long pause to give someone the opportunity to do something. Similarly, in Hearthstone you just have your turn, and can take any actions at any time during it. In Magic, you're split into various phases, with the main ones being a play phase, then attack, then another play phase. Again, it works in tabletop, but fills the computer version with yet more lengthy pauses where you don't want to do anything but have to wait for both players to have the opportunity to think about it and maybe play something.

So a Hearthstone turn might go:Play spell;Attack with creature;Play another creature.

A similar turn in Magic would be:Play spell;Wait for opponent to respond;If they do, wait for your response;Potentially endless loop of waiting and responses until someone runs out of cards;Wait for you to do something else or end phase;Wait for opponent to respond;Declare attack;Wait for opponent to play in response;Same loop of potential responses again;Wait for opponent to declare blocking;Wait for you to play things in response;Loop again;Resolve combat;Wait for players to respond to results of combat;LoopPlay another creature;Wait for opponent to respond;Loop;Wait for you to do something else or end phase;Wait for opponent to respond.

Importantly, none of the pauses can actually be skipped, since at every point there are two players who could potentially do something. Even if you just want to end the phase because you're not going to do anything, you still need to leave your opponent time to respond to you wanting to end the phase (playing a spell at the last moment before the combat phase starts, for example). In tabletop, it's not a problem because you're face-to-face and can just interrupt if you want to play something, and does allow a bit more complexity and often entertaining clusterfucks as counters pile up on each other. But on a computer it means every turn takes far too long even if no-one wants to do anything, and even when action is happening it's constantly broken up by lengthy pauses just in case someone might want to do something.

So how accessible is it? As I say, in terms of actual gameplay it's not particularly hard to pick up and does allow for a bit more complexity and interactivity than a game like Hearthstone in which you're completely passive for half the time. But if you're playing only on a computer and are coming to it from a game designed and streamlined for that style, you're likely to find it incredibly frustrating and boring.

shintakie10:Im curious about this. As a person who mainly plays Hearthstone and their only other card game experience being Yugioh back around the time of synchro summons started (card games on motorcycles!), how accessible is MtG?

It's really not like Hearthstone at all.

It's pretty different from Yugioh, but not that bad once you learn the rules and get into it. There are certain things that are definitely different and need some getting used to (mana, power/toughness instead of atk/def, having your opponent declare blockers instead of choosing your attack target).

If you've had experience with CCGs through Yugioh, getting into MtG shouldn't be THAT much of a problem.

On-topic: I really like Magic, but I've never really gotten into it because (1) cost and (2) finding people to play with IRL. So I'm really excited for this. This will definitely solve problem 2, and I don't plan on spending any money on this so hopefully the gold gains will be large enough to solve problem 1 too.

shintakie10:Im curious about this. As a person who mainly plays Hearthstone and their only other card game experience being Yugioh back around the time of synchro summons started (card games on motorcycles!), how accessible is MtG?

The barrier to entry for the card game was always too severe (so expensive) to get into the paper game, but an online game would definitely be easier to hop into. However I've looked at some of those cards and the text is kind of baffling and excessively long?

Is it just a matter of needing to know a few key things and being able to learn while doing or would I need to actually sit down and read a bunch to learn how to play?

The biggest wall for me was the cost.I find one of those easy to learn hard to master sort of games. There is a lot of reading but the basic rules are fairly straightforward.

To be honest Yugioh these days is almost as ridiculous as magic >.>

Oh I know. I punked out of Yugioh because Synchro Summons started making the game convoluted to hell. It used to make sense. Special summons weren't all over the place and you needed some form of board presence to pull it off, or multiple very specific cards. Synchro Summons came out and suddenly you could get a board full of 5-6+ star monsters out on turn 1 and those cards had freakin ridiculous effects.

I've glanced at it lately and now I'm horribly baffled. Pendulum summons? Summoning from graveyards? Summoning from your extra deck? What the crap is going on here.

This is the same game that limited removal cards that actually had a cost attached, or had a major downside. Cards nowadays make some of those old bans and limits seem ridiculous by comparison.